Winter Journalistic Short Stories

The interior of a passenger train car, halted and powerless in a raging blizzard. The air is frigid and thick with the scent of stale breath and fear. Dim, intermittent light from dying phone screens casts long, dancing shadows across passengers huddled for warmth, illuminating the frost creeping up the inside of the windows. The only sounds are the howl of the wind outside and the unsettling groans of the train's metal contracting in the cold.

A record-breaking blizzard batters a small, isolated cafe. Inside, the air is thick with the smell of coffee, fear, and the low hum of a fluorescent bulb. Outside, the world is a white, howling void.

The air inside the cabin is colder than the air outside, thick with the dust of disuse and the palpable weight of unspoken history. Each object sits under a fine grey film, a silent testament to a life abandoned mid-sentence. Outside, the wind begins its low, mournful prelude through the black spires of pine trees, and the sky lowers itself onto the landscape like a slab of slate.